Divyansh Agarwal_Architecture Portfolio_2011-18

portfolio architecture and design

DIVYANSH AGARWAL

[2011-2018]

Southern California Institute of Architecture

DIVYANSH AGARWAL

table of contents Background

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Man Made Nature Semblance Visual Mediums Professional Practice Musi Riverfront Cultural Center

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background Divyansh Agarwal is currently a graduate student pursuing his Masters at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He has previously received a Bachelors of Architecture from the R.V. College of Architecture, Bangalore, India and is also a licensed architect under the Council of Architecture, India. He has professionally worked in the role of a Junior Architect at Vastu Shilpa Consultants - Sangath, Ahmadabad under the tutelage of professor emeritus Dr. B.V. Doshi. Here his work was focused on design and construction of National Educational Institutions being planned across India.

Also as a part of the undergraduate curriculum, he has interned for a year at Fountain Head Design Group, Hyderabad, assisting on the design of large-scale residential and commercial projects. As a student at RVCA, he was pro-actively involved in various design invitational competitions and was also involved in the curation of several student exhibitions. He comes here with the humble understanding of art and space making and intends to use these as tools for architectural expression and experimentation in his architectural discourse at SCI-Arc. During this process, he looks forward to exploring the kinetics of the virtual spaces and evolves a new vocabulary in the field of architecture.

With these learnings, he hopes to contribute into the development of architecture, with a desire to address and resolve issues related to historical conservation, mass housing, and simultaneously contribute to the field of architectural pedagogy.

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man made nature Design Studio II SPRING 2018 SCI_Arc Instructor: Kristy Balliet Team: Swathi Devadas Issues of labor, commerce, tourism, and global economies marked the final phases of what is usually called “modernization”. This process can be described as the end of nature - using Zizek’s words, “Nature is over, there is no nature anymore.” And while classical ideals of nature disappear, the territory of nature has silently become an area for work, speculation and potentially a new aesthetic of architecture. It is precisely in this arena that the studio will look for new architectural opportunities. This year the 2GBX Design Studio will take on this controversial discussion - how contemporary “architecture” engages with “nature” within a high density city setting like Downtown LA. The project is productively situated between a mid-rise and tower massing, during one of the fastest economic turns that transformed a low density industrial zone into a highly valuable land for mixed-used developments.

These definitions are often relative to context and are relevant here, as the area of the project is in transition from horizontal fringe to a vertical landscape condition. This mixture of expansive market hall and repetitive vertical housing units will be exploited through the deliberate integration of nature, real, implied or fake. This combination will require innovative reconsider of circulation models, hybrid structural systems and an extensive exploration of material and color.

The Third Space

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Divyansh Agarwal _ Swathi Devadas | Kristy Balliet

Illustrations showing the intertwined third space with the residential spaces.

Picture showing the model elevation from the Wall Street end.

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1. Section through the Third space 2. Plan at Flower market level

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3. View at the Office tower Third space 4. Picture showing Model Plinth 5. Picture showing Model Overview

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semblance Design Studio I FALL 2018 SCI_Arc Instructor: Florencia Pita Team: Swathi Devadas The studio deals with the idea of semblance; semblance between the Fictional and the Real.To manifest the studio learnings, we create a library in a digitally captured fabric/ fragment of Duarte. Through the process of photogrammetry, we have undergone the process of image capture, depth mapping and digital recreation of the subject, that is, a composition of soaps.

Here, we attempt to capture the physical attributes of the soap and project it onto its digital image, in the process, manipulating the digital image through a controlled workflow imparting to it, its original characteristics, also reimagining and recreating new traits of its own.

Here, we transition from an everyday object, to a speculative image and finally to a habitable mass.The array of textures projected on to the digital image is a semi-controlled amalgamation of the original textures of the soap and the scripted, manipulated versions of them.

The landscape around the building is so designed so as to create pause points and direction, and direct visitors towards the library. It envelopes the mass of the library at the lower floor, creating a community-centric space.

We’ve achieved a spherical space, enabling us to create a focal point; an automated book retrieval system as its core, flanked by an open-planned system of seminal spaces that can adapt to the changing nature of the library as a typology.Logically, the auditorium is positioned on the topmost level so as to create large-span free-flowing spaces underneath.

Primary Object Massing and texture study.

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Unwrapped texture map - Processing Model showing the digitally sculpted and re textured soap.

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Library against the St. Gabriel range.

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Axonometric view of the North Facade

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visual mediums Visual Studies I - II FALL, Spring 2018 SCI_Arc Instructor: Casey Rehm, Casey Reas, Kristy Balliet, Ryan Tyler Martinez

The Gesture and the Line Lines and The course will cover issues of contemporary representation and the development of splines in relation to complex digital form and physical and visual space.

Visualization today encompasses the development, exploration and communication of information and ideas in multiple mediums.

Workshop with Casey Reas - Processing Beginning with the fundamentals of Processing, the course will examine the notion of“Regularity and Random”, “Growth, Form, and Simulation”, and “Emergence” in both two and three dimensions.

The Big Picture Introduction to X Gen, a geometry instancer that lets you populate the surface of polygon meshes with an arbitrary number of primitives either randomly or uniformly placed. X Gen lets you quickly populate large-scale environments, including grass savannas, forests, rocky landscapes, and debris trails. The idea is to create large pictorial landscapes using the combination of the output from Processing, spherical envelope volumes in Zbrush and XGen surface textures in Maya.

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The Gesture and the Line - Object designed by lines from VR gestures, surfaces lofted and populated by smaller nano-meshed objects.

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Suspended red smoke Cube - Processing The Big Picture - Figural compositions are made up by blurring typography and platonic volumes.

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The Big Picture - A collaborative picture creating platonic volumes and natural elements

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professional practice VASTU SHILPA CONSULTANTS - SANGATH 2017 - 18 Ahmedabad, India Principal Architect : Prof. B.V. Doshi | Rajeev Kathpalia

The work of the firm deals with the issue of form making, the purpose is to give form and significance to the fundamental human concerns that remain constant from period to period. The environmental problems that we face have changed dramatically in the recent past, yet mankind has not. It is the timeless qualities of human nature that provide a thread of continuity and familiarity amongst different cultures and different moments in history. In our view, it is the role of the architect to focus on these fundamental characteristics and needs to translate them into forms appropriate to their context and cultural milieu.

Alone among the arts, architecture offers both the opportunity and the obligation to explore issues of technical proficiency, aesthetic delight and human accommodation.

Discourses on architecture treat aesthetics and technical concerns with a certain ease, but issues of comfort, emotion, pleasure and pain do not easily find their way into discussion..... yet all buildings have the potential to elicit powerful responses from their inhabitants. To understand the link between our client’s emotions and aspirations and the evocative aspect of built form is the basis of our architectural philosophy.

Bhuj Earthquake Memorial - Check Dam

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National War Museum Competition - 2017

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National War Memorial Competition - 2017

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PLAZA

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RAMP

FLAME University Campus and Administration Building Design Development and Detailing - Under Construction

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Auronya Liberal Arts University, Puducherry, India - Design Development and Detailing - Under construction

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musi river front cultural center Unbergraduate Architectural Thesis 2015 RVCA, Bangalore Instructor: Nagraj Vastarey, Soumithro Gosh An inquiry into the history and heritage of city of Hyderabad.

Musi river - once the datum of growth for the city of Hyderabad. Now lies humbled state of extinction. It’s river banks hold the grounds for Hyderabad’s heritage wealth. Attempt is to insert a catalyst into the precinct to restructure and re-establish its lost glory.

Hyderabad, a city still rising from a harsh bifurcation has a rich history and heritage. The city grew on the south banks of the Musi river - a tributary of Krishna river. The river, once the datum of growth for the city now appears to be a scar on its face. It splits the city into two contrasting parts. The purpose of this study is to approach these two sides of the city from a view point which recognizes the distinctions between cultural sections based on social, economic and also physical parameters.

City is seen as a cross cultural laboratory for investigating how a cities machinery is operated on the two sides of the geographical divide under pressure of varying parameters of social, cultural and economic norms.

The deteriorated state of the Musi and the alarming state of its heritage has lead to several questions about a city’s stand on its heritage and cultural wealth. The inquiry of this thesis would be to understand the issues of traditionalism, continuity and changing nature of the built environment, in and beyond the walled city of Hyderabad, viewed in this above-mentioned context. The attempt is made to answer these issues through architecture and to establish a frame work to revitalize the precinct.

Illustration Hyderabad and its essence

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Riverfront Overview

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Exploded axonometric of the Cultrual center and the Gallery Bridge

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Plan showing the Proposed Cultural Center and the briedge in its precinct.

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Rendered view of the redeveloped North River Bank witht he Cultural center in the backdrop.